Gratz Park

Dr. Popkin has produced a detailed and incisive history of the park. It pushes beyond the received wisdom about the area to show the crucial role of Gratz’s descendants in celebrating Benjamin Gratz as a town father and ensuring the public that the green between Transylvania University and downtown Lexington continues to bear his name. Willcutt’s photography, when paired with Popkin’s narrative, will foster greater appreciation of the history of Gratz Park and its role in Lexington’s past and present. Popkin’s and Willcutt’s publication will compel residents and visitors to engage the history of a specific part of Lexington more deeply; to reflect on how Gratz Park has been a site of inclusion and exclusion throughout its history; and to consider the complex past behind a seemingly prosaic part of the urban landscape. Further, as a publication, the book will have an influence for years to come.

What will really make the book unique are the photos by Bob Willcutt. His work is professionally executed and extremely beautiful and will provide a new and fascinating way to engage the subject. Speaking from the experience of having written a photographic history of Ashland, I can say with confidence that people connect to that sort of history more readily than others. Bob has also done photographic work on Ashland, Ward Hall, and Waveland State Historic Site that are also very popular and well received. Through Bob’s work, these places are reaching new audiences and existing ones in new ways and these books are a model that will deliver the stories of Gratz Park to a larger audience. As someone who has worked with Bob and Jeremy and seen their work closely, I can say without question that they will bring new life and attention to the important history of the Gratz family and the park.

As the author or editor of some twenty books, I know how difficult it is to gather material, put it in a readable format, and illustrate it properly. Yet that process, now, more than ever, needs to be done. Books such as this are more permanent than Instagram; they speak to us. Generations after the authors have passed from this world they represent, as one historian wrote, “an act of creation.”

As this book beautifully illustrates, Gratz Park is the historic heart of Lexington, the place that best exemplifies the city’s early ambitions for prosperity, education, and culture. Two centuries ago, when Lexington was being called the “Athens of the West”, Gratz Park was its Acropolis.